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Mind Leak 3: What's the big idea?

...or even the small idea? Where do they come from? Where do they live? Are ideas born inside our minds/bodies or do they come from outside of ourselves? If they come from outside, how do we invite them in? I once had the opportunity to ask some questions of one of Britain's top neurologists. I asked her where ideas come from. She told me that she'd spent her whole life studying the brain and still could not answer that question. She could show me how an idea might affect or stimulate different parts of the brain (depending on the kind of idea it was!) but she couldn't say where it might come from. The only thing she was sure about was that we only understand the brain by about one tenth, and that's what kept her passionate about researching it. So, the next time you have a big idea, and before you delve into what it is, why not try and figure out where it came from? Is it yours? Is it someone else's? Or is it totally original? Or is it different every time? And the next time you have an original idea and you do figure out where it came from, please let me know because I would like to attract a few more of them!